Ubuntu almost makes me want to switch from Vista...dual boot/gaming Qs

[BD2003]

So I hadnt toyed with linux for a few years, because even though there was a lot I liked about it, it was too much effort to do simple things. Then I hear all this rage about ubuntu, give it a try, and I have to say, it's come a VERY long way.

Beryl puts Aero Glass to shame, and it performs amazingly well.
It is far too easy to install software, most of which is actually good, but not quite yet.
You can customize everything.
It isn't bloated like Vista.

Yet all was not rosy.

Openoffice is very meh. Office 2007 blows it away. Thats to be expected, but hopefully in a little while the ribbons will get copied.

The hardware support was still a little iffy. I had to try a little too hard to get nvidia dualview working, but it works great eventually.

The multimedia support isnt quite there. Videos played, but not as well as they should have (wmv in particular). For the life of me, I cant find a decent music player/organizer with the most basic feature...an equalizer. Sound support was in general the most basic possible. No drivers for my X-fi. Thats certainly creative's fault, but thats pretty damn annoying.

Windows network shares werent as transparent as I'd hoped. Some apps wont read files off them. I can hook them up in nautilus, and then they'll not be there in open dialogs. NTFS r/w works fairly perfect, although I'm curious if theres any performance drag in using it.

The biggest problem for me is probably the file system. It's completely foreign to me. I can't quite figure out how the system works with several drives in a system, but for now I've been using the same NTFS shares as Vista for file storage which seems to work just fine.

Its so close to being able to replace windows for everything but gaming...but i'm gonna give it a try for a while.

My main question: is there any EASY way to freeze/suspend/hibernate/save my ubuntu session, boot into XP/Vista, play my game, then get back into ubuntu exactly as I previously had it?

 

[sourceninja]

I personally hate office 2007. I'm not a big fan of open office either. I usually use abiword + Gnumeric, but recently I've started using kde and I really like Koffice.

For your multimedia, I suggest you try amorak. It supports EQ and is probably the best player on linux out there. In fact you might find everything a lot easier if you switch to kde. Maybe give kubuntu a try.

Here's my vista story. I installed vista on my current machine (see system specs). Everything worked great, until I tried to game. The performance in supreme commander was so slow it was almost unplayable at the lowest settings. However in XP I can turn all the settings on max with no lag at all. This is also true with oblivion. I tried vista with areo turned off and noticed some performance increase, but it was still way slower in games then XP.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: sourceninja
I personally hate office 2007. I'm not a big fan of open office either. I usually use abiword + Gnumeric, but recently I've started using kde and I really like Koffice.

Its not much of a deal breaker to me, but the ribbons in O2007 are a HUGE improvement IMO. I dont use office enough for it to really stop me from using it, but it'd be nice.

For your multimedia, I suggest you try amorak. It supports EQ and is probably the best player on linux out there. In fact you might find everything a lot easier if you switch to kde. Maybe give kubuntu a try.

I tried Kubuntu/KDE - didnt really like it. It felt like it was trying too hard and not doing what it does very well. Even though gnome seems more simple, thats what made it so appealing to me.

Here's my vista story. I installed vista on my current machine (see system specs). Everything worked great, until I tried to game. The performance in supreme commander was so slow it was almost unplayable at the lowest settings. However in XP I can turn all the settings on max with no lag at all. This is also true with oblivion. I tried vista with areo turned off and noticed some performance increase, but it was still way slower in games then XP.

Gaming has been just fine for me in vista...a little slower, but no big deal. Id prob dual boot ubuntu with a stripped version of XP until DX10 games start trickling out. It's annoying enough to have to reboot in the first place, so I'm hoping theres at least an easier way to do it.

 

[Nothinman]

The multimedia support isnt quite there. Videos played, but not as well as they should have (wmv in particular). For the life of me, I cant find a decent music player/organizer with the most basic feature...an equalizer. Sound support was in general the most basic possible. No drivers for my X-fi. Thats certainly creative's fault, but thats pretty damn annoying.

I don't have many WMVs but most of them play just fine, some get garbled during seeking but that gets fixed at the next keyframe. As for music, I believe most people use RhythmBox or Banshee but I don't think either have eqs and I really never noticed until you mentioned it. I know that BMP (Beep Music Player) has an eq but it's just a WinAMP-style player.

Windows network shares werent as transparent as I'd hoped. Some apps wont read files off them. I can hook them up in nautilus, and then they'll not be there in open dialogs. NTFS r/w works fairly perfect, although I'm curious if theres any performance drag in using it.

In order for an app to use those paths it has to support the Gnome VFS but you can mount them via SMBFS or CIFS to anywhere in the filesystem and any app will be able to use them.

The biggest problem for me is probably the file system. It's completely foreign to me. I can't quite figure out how the system works with several drives in a system, but for now I've been using the same NTFS shares as Vista for file storage which seems to work just fine.

There's only one directory tree starting at / so any other drives have to be mounted at a directory below there. It's a little strange at first but it's a lot nicer than dealing with random drive letters.

My main question: is there any EASY way to freeze/suspend/hibernate/save my ubuntu session, boot into XP/Vista, play my game, then get back into ubuntu exactly as I previously had it?

I thought Ubuntu had hibernate in the menus by default? If not you could install the uswsusp package from universe, it should set it up for you and then you can just type 's2disk' to hibernate. There are other ways to accomplish it but that's probably the simplest.

 

[Cogman]

As far as the filesystem goes, Linux was made to be a server type system with all of its resources to appear as one. In linux, a drive is mounted to a specific folder and handles all subfolders unless otherwise specified.

So if you look at it, you have the "/" directory which is the root. it is generally mounted on your primary hard-drive. going a bit deaper you will see either a /mnt or /media or /mnt or that will have in it /*/cdrom. ubuntu uses both (creates a link to make it look like they have the same thing in them.)

Ext3 is probably the most stable filesystem for linux, Reiser4 is the fastest, XFS is quite fast as well. Ext3 is really the safest way to go though (until ext4 is fully release) it was developed by the same guys the made the linux kernel.

Be careful with NTFS writing, it is not native to linux and still a bit experimental as far as I know. (depending on how it is implemented, It should be just about as fast as it is in windows. some implementations will actually use the windows NTFS driver to give support to it for linux)

Give Wine a try for those windows apps you still want to use, you'll have to do some extra configuring though as the Ubuntu repositories are falling way behind in the wine versions (they are on 9.33, while 9.37 has been released...) Go to the winehq.com to find out how to setup the wine repositories to stay updated.

With my laptop, hibernation is an option when you shut down the computer. (just like windows) I believe you have to enable it in you power management options (just like windows)

 

[Nothinman]

As far as the filesystem goes, Linux was made to be a server type system with all of its resources to appear as one. In linux, a drive is mounted to a specific folder and handles all subfolders unless otherwise specified.

Well it was made to be a unix-like system so the single filesystem tree comes from there. The fact that it's mainly used for servers is orthogonal to the filesystem layout, VMS uses different labels sort of like drive letters for each volume and it's obviously a server system.

Ext3 is probably the most stable filesystem for linux, Reiser4 is the fastest, XFS is quite fast as well. Ext3 is really the safest way to go though (until ext4 is fully release) it was developed by the same guys the made the linux kernel.

I can't deny that ext3 is the safest choice but I wouldn't go near any version of reiserfs and reiser4 isn't patched into any distros that I know. I personally use XFS whenever possible because it's a good bit faster than ext3 and in most cases just as stable. JFS is also supposed to be decent but it doesn't get as much testing as XFS and the XFS userland tools are awesome.

Be careful with NTFS writing, it is not native to linux and still a bit experimental as far as I know. (depending on how it is implemented, It should be just about as fast as it is in windows. some implementations will actually use the windows NTFS driver to give support to it for linux)

Unless something's changed you have to jump through some pretty big hoops to enable writing with the in-kernel NTFS module so he's likey using NTFS-3g which uses FUSE and the Windows NTFS driver. I don't have any first hand experience with it but I've heard some friends say that it works pretty well overall.

 

[Googer]

Word Perfect is light years ahead of OFFICE 2007 and UBUNTU does not play well with Intel 815 Integrated Graphics.

 

[BD2003]

I thought Ubuntu had hibernate in the menus by default? If not you could install the uswsusp package from universe, it should set it up for you and then you can just type 's2disk' to hibernate. There are other ways to accomplish it but that's probably the simplest.

It does...but it didnt work for me, told me I didnt have enough swap space. Besides, is that going to work with dual boot anyway even if I did have enough swap?

Unless something's changed you have to jump through some pretty big hoops to enable writing with the in-kernel NTFS module so he's likey using NTFS-3g which uses FUSE and the Windows NTFS driver. I don't have any first hand experience with it but I've heard some friends say that it works pretty well overall.

Yeah, thats what I'm using. Not having any problems with it at all.

Word Perfect is light years ahead of OFFICE 2007 and UBUNTU does not play well with Intel 815 Integrated Graphics.

Let me have some of what you're smoking.

I don't have many WMVs but most of them play just fine, some get garbled during seeking but that gets fixed at the next keyframe. As for music, I believe most people use RhythmBox or Banshee but I don't think either have eqs and I really never noticed until you mentioned it. I know that BMP (Beep Music Player) has an eq but it's just a WinAMP-style player.

Yeah, that garbling happens often, but not only is that annoying, they just dont plain look as good. VLC is a headache for me to use, same with mplayer. Can't believe they make players that "advanced", and they dont even have controls in fullscreen. The only one that does is Totem, and thats about as simple as it gets.

I am digging Banshee though, but I'm still really missing that EQ. 🙁

 

[Looney]

I'm a big fan of Office 2007 as well. So much that i don't even use my Mac version of Word 2003.

 

[Cogman]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
I can't deny that ext3 is the safest choice but I wouldn't go near any version of reiserfs and reiser4 isn't patched into any distros that I know. I personally use XFS whenever possible because it's a good bit faster than ext3 and in most cases just as stable. JFS is also supposed to be decent but it doesn't get as much testing as XFS and the XFS userland tools are awesome.

Isn't Reiserfs consider stable? The Kernel developers had to put a lot of effort into it because Hans gave it too them and stopped supporting it (It was still experimental as I recall) Hence the reason that Reiser4 which is one of the big reasons that Reiser4 has not been commited to the kernel tree. Either way, Reiserfs is about par with Ext3 AFAIK so there is really no reason to go with it over ext3.

Also, Does Ubuntu suport installing with XFS? I have not paid enough attention to check and see. (Im happy with ext3 myself)

 

[sourceninja]

Semi on topic, is there a windows filesystem driver for XFS. One reason I really like ext3 is that in a worse cast scenario, I can hook the hard drive up to my xp box and get my data off with ext3.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Looney
I'm a big fan of Office 2007 as well. So much that i don't even use my Mac version of Word 2003.

personally I couldn't give a damn less about any sort of office application. As long as it gets done what I need I don't care how fancy or ugly or whatever it is.

There are at least 3 good open source word proccessors for Linux and 2 full fledged office suites. Which ever you like is a matter of taste..

OpenOffice.org will have best compatability with general MS Office BS.

Koffice has the most features. Hell, you can edit HD film with it if you want.
http://www.koffice.org/

There is Gnome office suite, which is a collection of various applications that have been massaged to itegrate into Gnome better. Main componates are going to be Abiword, which is blazing fast word proccessor, and Gnumeric which has some special features that Excel lacks and is pretty fast itself. I'd recommend them strongly to anybody with a older computer.

Isn't Reiserfs consider stable? The Kernel developers had to put a lot of effort into it because Hans gave it too them and stopped supporting it (It was still experimental as I recall) Hence the reason that Reiser4 which is one of the big reasons that Reiser4 has not been commited to the kernel tree. Either way, Reiserfs is about par with Ext3 AFAIK so there is really no reason to go with it over ext3.

Avoid Reiserfs.

Use Ext3 unless you have special needs. It's the most 'rugged' FS. It has highest compatability with other things and despite what people tell you it's just as fast as anything else for most things.

Otherwise XFS is also a good choice.




For a media player I use MPD, music player daemon. It's a service that plays in the background and you can connect to it through various front-end programs. There is command line client, which is good for scripting, then web front ends and other such things.

XMMS2 is like that also, but it's so insanely over-engineered that I have no idea how to work the stupid thing.

The current front-end I am using and like the most is gmpc. http://www.musicpd.org/gmpc.shtml The release I am using now has a fairly dramatic UI change since previous versions, fixing a lot of the previous limitations.

Other front-end that I liked was Sonata. http://sonata.berlios.de/

The front-ends do a good job nowadays. Almost as full featured as the complex media players, but since you can close them down at will they stay out of the way.

 

[Nothinman]

It does...but it didnt work for me, told me I didnt have enough swap space. Besides, is that going to work with dual boot anyway even if I did have enough swap?

As long as you don't touch anything shared between them, i.e. make sure any filesystems that Windows will write to are umounted first.

Yeah, that garbling happens often, but not only is that annoying, they just dont plain look as good. VLC is a headache for me to use, same with mplayer. Can't believe they make players that "advanced", and they dont even have controls in fullscreen. The only one that does is Totem, and thats about as simple as it gets.

I love mplayer and use it every day, once you know the basic keyboard commands it's awesome.

Isn't Reiserfs consider stable?

Depends on who you talk to, personally I'll never consider it stable.

The Kernel developers had to put a lot of effort into it because Hans gave it too them and stopped supporting it (It was still experimental as I recall) Hence the reason that Reiser4 which is one of the big reasons that Reiser4 has not been commited to the kernel tree. Either way, Reiserfs is about par with Ext3 AFAIK so there is really no reason to go with it over ext3.

Actually one or two SuSE developers pretty much took over once Hans dropped it for Reiser4 but I guess they're kernel developers too. But I would never go so far as to say that reiser-anything is on par with ext3 or XFS or probably even JFS.

Also, Does Ubuntu suport installing with XFS? I have not paid enough attention to check and see. (Im happy with ext3 myself)

No clue, I'm a happy Debian sid user.

Semi on topic, is there a windows filesystem driver for XFS. One reason I really like ext3 is that in a worse cast scenario, I can hook the hard drive up to my xp box and get my data off with ext3.

Persoanlly I consider a Linux LiveCD a better option than an XP machine, but to each his own.

 

[sourceninja]

The problem with using a live CD vs a filesystem driver for windows is what to save the recovered files on? Sure I might be able to pop that liveCD in, get to the drive, but then what? If I had another linux machine, I'd just hook the drive to that. So because I don't, I would need a liveCD with full NTFS write support. It's not likely to happen. But with the ext3 filesystem driver, I can get what I need, put it on the windows machine.

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: sourceninja
The problem with using a live CD vs a filesystem driver for windows is what to save the recovered files on? Sure I might be able to pop that liveCD in, get to the drive, but then what? If I had another linux machine, I'd just hook the drive to that. So because I don't, I would need a liveCD with full NTFS write support. It's not likely to happen. But with the ext3 filesystem driver, I can get what I need, put it on the windows machine.

usbkey with fat32?

 

[drag]

NTFS-3g is a fuse-based file system. It is widely considured to have safe read-write support. And they are serious about it, it's no half-ass thing like using windows ntfs drivers in Linux like captive-ntfs.

It's based on a project that has been around for a long long time developing open source drivers for ntfs, so it's mature as far as these things go.

Most newer live-cds should have support for it nowadays.